China Hardware Innovation Center

China Hardware Innovation Center (CHIC) was a year and a half long project in a team of 5 skilled students (2 engineers, 2 design students and 1 business student), where we had to entirely designed from scracth a connected device, in our case a smart sensor for home plants, that can transform any plant into a highly sensitive touch sensor and generate beautiful visuals.

For the first year of the program, we worked on the creation of a sensor (3D printed box, PCBs) which allowed minimal viable performances (the sensor could detect when a plant was being touched). The second year of the program was focused on a much more technical aspect: the development of a new sensing technology that uses machine learning to not only detect when a plant (or actually, any object) is touched, but to also eventually detect how or where the object is being touched.

The work involved many aspects, a lot of them being technical: programming microcontrollers, designing PCBs and producing them, fast prototyping.

Though we also had to work in a team and this came with its challenges and many opportunites to work my soft skills. This project was definitely one of the highlight of my student career at EPFL.